First Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for April

If All the World Were Paper



The Little Cock Sparrow



Ye Song of Sixpence



My Lady's Garden

The Land of Story-Books

At evening when the lamp is lit,

Around the fire my parents sit;

They sit at home and talk and sing,

And do not play at anything.


Now, with my little gun, I crawl

All in the dark along the wall,

And follow round the forest track

Away behind the sofa back.


There, in the night, where none can spy,

All in my hunter's camp I lie,

And play at books that I have read

Till it is time to go to bed.


These are the hills, these are the woods,

These are my starry solitudes;

And there the river by whose brink

The roaring lions come to drink.


I see the others far away

As if in firelit camp they lay,

And I, like to an Indian scout,

Around their party prowled about.


So when my nurse comes in for me,

Home I return across the sea,

And go to bed with backward looks

At my dear land of Story-Books.

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 6 My Father Meets a Rhinoceros from My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett The Story of a Wise Woman from Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston Why the Sheep Ran Away from Among the Farmyard People by Clara Dillingham Pierson Tom Thumb from Fairy Tales Too Good To Miss—Up the Stairs by Lisa M. Ripperton In a Strange Land from On the Shores of the Great Sea by M. B. Synge The Lonely Herdsman (Part 1 of 2) from The Swiss Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins The Great Ship That Saved Eight People from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Precocious Piggy by Thomas Hood 		Twinkletoes by A. A. Milne
The Rock-a-By Lady by Eugene Field 		Happy Thought by Robert Louis Stevenson The Snow-Bird by Frank Dempster Sherman Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star by Jane Taylor Can't by Christina Georgina Rossetti
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf

A Shepherd Boy tended his master's Sheep near a dark forest not far from the village. Soon he found life in the pasture very dull. All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd's pipe.

One day as he sat watching the Sheep and the quiet forest, and thinking what he would do should he see a Wolf, he thought of a plan to amuse himself.

His Master had told him to call for help should a Wolf attack the flock, and the Villagers would drive it away. So now, though he had not seen anything that even looked like a Wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, "Wolf! Wolf!"

As he expected, the Villagers who heard the cry dropped their work and ran in great excitement to the pasture. But when they got there they found the Boy doubled up with laughter at the trick he had played on them.

A few days later the Shepherd Boy again shouted, "Wolf! Wolf!" Again the Villagers ran to help him, only to be laughed at again. Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon the Sheep.


[Illustration]

In terror the Boy ran toward the village shouting "Wolf! Wolf!" But though the Villagers heard the cry, they did not run to help him as they had before. "He cannot fool us again," they said.

The Wolf killed a great many of the Boy's sheep and then slipped away into the forest.

Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth.